Of Hatchets and Zombies [CLOSED]

Jasmine watched as the talons of the griffin next to her prepared to seize the stake from the foal. The tension in the air began to mount as she awaited the inevitable. It was comparable to her watching the earth approach her rapidly when she was a foal before a crash, or similar to knowing well in advance that one of her party balloons were about to burst. Her heart was completely with this foal in this moment and it wasn't a good feeling watching the poor thing suffer. Despite her uncertainties she had to keep hope for the young one.

"You're doing a good job! I promithe thith ith about to be over, then we'll get you fixthed up and we can go get you in a thafe plathe!" She continued to babble on trying to ensure that the foal wasn't focusing on Crackle's first aid. Perhaps if the foals' attention was on herself the pain wouldn't be as excruciating when Crackle finally removed the chunk of wood. She could only hope as the scene appeared to be nearing it's conclusion.

Crackle prepared to remove the wooden shard from the filly. Thanks to sanctity's magic and Jasmine's reassurances, the filly was still enough that it shouldnt be a problem.

"Good, pay attention to Jasmine! I'm going to count to three, then pull this out, ok? One... Two..." He gave a sudden yank before he said 3, pulling out a long bloody shard. The filly screamed long and loud. "Jasmine! Make her drink that potion! Now!" The griffin looked down and saw some bits of wood still stuck in her flesh. "Sanctity! Keep her still!" He reached out and rapidly withdrew the remaining bits, blood flowing freely from the wound. "Sorry little one, but it's over now. Drink the potion and you'll be feeling all better right away, I promise."

Sanctity increased the power of his magic, holding her squirming limbs as still as he could whilst the others helped her. He didn't feel right doing this, but it was for the good of the filly. He kept his eyes shut and started to soften the field so she could move slowly. Hopefully the potion would take effect swiftly and she wouldn't damage herself, or be so scared she'd try and run away.

Seeing that the others had the situation well in hand, Jackpot moved off to loot the areas the Crackle hadn't gotten to. He split his attention between watching for more ghouls, monitoring the situation with the filly, and going through the remnants of the caravan.

Jasmine tried her best to focus as Crackle performed surgery on the filly. Even through the near sighted vision of the pegasus' eyes, the ordeal proved almost too gruesome to watch. Despite the sickening feeling in her stomach Jas forced herself to observe the filly carefully-trying to ensure that she would catch anything that would go wrong.

Finally she got her signal. Like a flash Jasmine hopped to her flask and proceeded to pour it into the young filly's mouth. She watched as she tried to use a free hoof to hold the filly's head still. It felt almost like an eternity up until this point. Jasmine continued pouring as she tried to ensure the foal's safety.

After a tense moment, the wound in the filly's side began to stitch together. Her cries of agony faded to merely sobs of sorrow. Crackle signaled Sanctity to release his magic, and once he did she staggered forward and embraced Jasmine in a hug, sobbing into her shoulder. Crackle let out a sigh of relief and stepped back out of the wagon, letting the sun-tinted mare comfort the filly. He nodded to the others gathered around, informing them of what happened. Once he was done explaining, Crackle returned to his looting.

[Apologies for the delay, Jasmine was very busy IRL. Hopefully, things will pick up speed again soon]

Jasmine gently embraced the sobbing filly in a warm hug as she looked for comfort. Jasmine's smile softened as she held the young one in her fore hooves, trying not to cry herself. Her eyes shifted to Crackle and Sanctity as she gave them each a nod, seemingly trying to say thank you before turning her full-attention to the foal. She could feel the tears on her shoulder fur as the filly sobbed away. Jasmine did nothing to stop her, and she could only imagine the horrible things that the poor thing had witnessed. She stroked the mane of the young one softly and rocked her back and fourth in her arms.

Sanctity dropped his magic as the fillies cries softened, breathing a sigh of relief. She was okay. Well, not okay, but better at least. He opened his eyes again and trotted closer to her, smiling softly at both the filly and Jasmine as he did so. "Sorry about holdin' you down like that" he apologized quietly as he knelt down near the pair, before going silent for a little bit. "What's your name kiddo?"

Deus scoffed quietly at the others. Why would they waste their time with this little one? They had much more pressing matters to attend to. They had much more important things to deal with. She slowly backed away into the shadows to watch. She should have put a little more kick into that spell. But then they wouldn't trust you. You need to eliminate them without even letting them know what happened. They will DIE!! Why can't we be friends...

Sticking his head out of the back of a nearby wagon, Crackle looked over the scattered group with a frown. "Alright everypony, grab your gear! That firefight was bound to have attracted attention and we still have a job to do! Grab whatever loot you can and lets move on. Jasmine, unless you can find a volunteer to take that filly back to stableton, get her on her hooves. Carry her if you have to, but we aren't leaving her here." The griffen then proceeded to grab his loot and hop out, standing by the wagon as he waited for the rest of them to fall in.

Last edited by Crackle on Mon Jan 14, 2013 3:50 pm; edited 1 time in total

Collat was back inside the caravan, not to clear it out of enemies, but to clear it out in valuables. He heard Crackle and looked among the rubble, in search of something, anything useful. Of course, he didn't nearly have enough time to sift throigh it all, so he kicked open a promising looking crate and looked through its contents.

Jackpot stood up from where he had been crouched over a fallen caravaneer and walked over to Crackle, carrying the items he had retrieved from the wagons and their former owners. He examined the items the griffin had retrieved, looking for something he might want to trade for. He hoped that Crackle didn't have any magpie blood in him...

Despite Crackle's shout, the filly remained where she was, tears running into Jasmine's mane. Her hug was almost to the point of choking the pegasus ."N-n-no! D-don't go! The monsters are gonna come back a-and they're gonna e-eat me a-a-and..." The poor brown filly broke down again mid-protest, he sobs returning with renewed vigor.

As Crackle ransacked wagons and dumped out saddlebags, he managed to acquire several packages of pre-war food; enough to feed the party for a couple days. He also found a badly damaged rifle on one of the guards. It appeared to have been used as a club when a ghoul got too close. The barrel was bent, the wooden stock was in splinters, and the bolt appeared to be jammed open. However, there was an intat bipod still secured to it that Crackle managed to detach without too much difficulty. Further along, he found a decent quality combat knife embedded between a dead ghoul's ribs.

Jackpot found nothing besides some caps and ammo on the bodies he looted, but inside the wagon he chose to investigate there was a locked medical box bearing the easily recognised trio of butterflies emblazoned on a yellow background. There was also a decent sized box of cigars that was bound to be worth something to the right person...

Collateral was probably the most fortunate of them all. Inside the crate was very large rifle with an exceptionally large bore. The barrel was almost big enough for collat to fit his hoof down! the wooden stock was painted a sleek black and on top of the barrel the easily-recognisable symbol of the Talon mercenaries had been painted. Instead of the standard horizontal mouth bit trigger, this gun had a vertical grip integrated into the stock below the barrel. The design looked like it would be rather difficult for a pony to use, even mounted on a battle saddle. At the least, it would require extensive modification should he choose to use it. In the crate with it there was a black leather bandoleer with several large round-tipped shells tucked into it and a metal ammo box containing some 5.56 rounds for his Varmint rifle and a few .22 bullets. The buckle on the bandoleer was in the shape of the Talon logo, so it was a fair assumption that the large shells were ammo for the grenade rifle.

Beyond what the scavengers came up with, there was nothing of value. For the most part, the cargo in the wagons and posessions of the decesed ponies had either been destroyed in the brawl or held no interest to the party. Most of the crates were filled with scrap, salvage, or junk that had no real value. Judging by the state of the wagons and what little cargo was intact, the caravan wasn't a particularly prosperous one.

Grinning, Jackpot tucked the small pouch of caps into a pocket and tucked the box of cigars under his arm. He was never much of a smoker even though the health risks for him were damn near nonexistent by now. He fiddled with the first aid kit for a while, but wound up being unable to open it. He didn't know how to pick the lock and using brute force to pry it open was also unsuccessful. He hopped out of the wagon wondering just what the damn things were made of and why they had been designed to be damn near indestructible and held the yellow metal box up.

Deus wasn't very interested in what the other's were doing, but her survey of the surrounding area revealed something she hadn't noticed before; one of the slain ghouls was a unicorn. She walked over to it and stared at the corpse for a moment. Life destroyed, but not ended, then ended by their weapons. Deus wondered briefly whether or not this ghoul would have been more useful unliving when she finally found the source of the things.

Slowly, a certain knife was levitated out of a certain pack, and hung over the thing's head for a spell. Deus brought the knife to the base of the horn, right where it met the rotting flesh. She moved the knife along the horn, peeling away the skin around the horn, cleaning off that part of the skull in a highly unclean manner. Once the horn was on it's own, Deus put away her knife and pulled out her gun. She had never fired the thing, and never really intended to. She very carefully and almost gently used the butt to break away the horn as cleanly as possible.

She levitated her new prize in front of herself for a few moments, examining it. Her mouth slowly turned to a tiny smile, and she said in nearly a whisper, "Hello sweetie, and welcome. I wonder what stories you have to tell?..."

Sanctity moved away from the crying filly slowly. He'd be no help there, Jasmine seemed much better with kids and well, he wasn't exactly the most reassuring face for the little mare right about now. He left the wagon through the hole he'd come into it from and looked around at the distance for a moment, trying to see if there were any more ghouls around, before he heard the familiar, disturbing sound of knife scraping bone.

He looked over and watched Deus very carefully clean and take the horn from one of the ghouls heads. He felt bile rise in his throat a little as he watched her smile, recognizing that emotion. He felt a little tingle of dread hang on him as he looked away, remembering the explosion she'd caused earlier. She hadn't been trying to kill him, had she? Probably not, but... Well, he wasn't feeling particularly safe around her anyway. He'd just make sure to keep an eye on her even more so.

Collateral picked up the grenade rifle and checked it out. It was nice. Very nice. "Sweet. Not my style, but sweet nonetheless." He slung the bandolier on his shoulder and put the 5-5-6ers and .22s in his bag. This'll need some work if I want to use this effectively... If I can't, maybe Crackle can.....The pegasus and his loot came out of the destroyed caravan looking 20% more badass. He walked back to the others when he spotted that one unicorn... Deus, doing... something to a corpse.

Crackle raised a talon. "Toss it over, I'll take a crack at-Is that a box of Maretecristos?! Where did you find those?" He eyed the box under the undead dogs arm for a moment, then held out the combat knife, hilt first. "...Would you consider a trade?"

Jackpot tossed the yellow metal tin over to the griffin, considering the offer. After a moment, he patted the hilt of one of the axes tucked into his belt. "I think I'm set for now. It is a fine blade, though. Give it to someone else who would use it." He opened the box of cigars and tucked a few into a pocket on the inside of his coat, then closed it and passed it over. "Here, take it. I have little use for them."

Grinning, Crackle caught the medkit and took the box, tucking all the remaining cigars but one into one of his pouches. He withdrew a small metal cutter and clipped the end off of it, then clamped it in his beak and flicked open a small brass lighter. Touching the flame to the tip, Crackle took a few puffs. Flicking the small brass rectangle closed with a click, he sighed. "Been a looong time since I've had a Maretecristo... Thanks, Jackpot."

Setting the yellow box down, he withdrew a small screwdriver and a lockpick actually designed for the task from a different pouch than the one the cigars had vanished into. Inserting them into the lock, he set to work opening it with a small curl of smoke rising from the cigar.

It took a little while and a few broken lockpicks, but crackle did manage to eventually get the medkit unlocked. Inside was a minor healing potion, 2 dash inhalers, a bottle of rad-x pills, and 3 pouches filled with Rad-away.

Crackle tucked the potion and rad-x into one of his many pouches. Pausing for a moment to think, he passed the Rad-away to Jackpot. "Seeing as you actually like radiation, you get to carry these. You won't get incapacitated the same way we will if we get irradiated and you've gotta haul your own weight if you're coming with us, so it's now your job to make sure nopony dies of radiation poisoning." Turning to the rest of the group, he held up the pair of dash inhalers. "Who wants 'em?"

Sanctity drew his gaze from the unicorn as a familliar scent drifted over to him. His nose twitched softly and he circled around the hulk, in search of the source of the smell. He peeked around a corner and spotted Crackle as he worked on the yellow box. He looked curiously at the source of the smell, a thick cigar that he was chewing on.

"Huh, where the hell'd you find M-" he cut himself off as the box clucked open and the griffon popped the lid of it open. Most of the contents were rather innocuous, just some of the normal boring chems that people tended to slap in them, but a pair of familliar plastic and metal devices brought a spark to his eyes "Dibs on the Dash" he called, reaching out with his magic to pick up the two inhalers and drawing them towards him.

Releasing the inhalers to Sanc's telekinetic grasp, Crackle turned back to the wagons. "Jasmine! Get the filly moving! We gotta get a move on. It took far more ghouls than the ones we've seen to overrun this caravan, so we gotta go hunt them down. We need-" Once again, he was cut off mid-sentence as Collat approached. He spotted the Grenade rifle slung over the pegasus' shoulder, and he nearly let out a squee. "Holy Fu-an XM-420 Krakara? Where the-You know what, I don't even wanna know. Tell ya what, I'll mount this bipod I found on your rifle for you while we wait for jasmine, if you wanna trade."